Classroom Questions

Questions for ‘Behold the world’s weirdest library — which might save your life’ 

an illustratiion showing a 'library

The National Institute of Standards and Technology maintains a collection of standard reference materials that researchers, engineers, companies and more can use to know if their tools and products measure up. This one-of-a-kind “library” contains dry cat food, spinach, antibody-making cells and even poop.

JoAnna Wendel

By Science News Explores

To accompany ‘Behold the world’s weirdest library — which might save your life’

SCIENCE

Before Reading:

  1. Imagine tasting two foods. One is something you’ve eaten many times, the other is something you’ve never had before. After tasting each, you are asked which one — the novel food or the familiar one — is a more typical, or standard, example of that type of food. Will it be more difficult, less difficult or about the same difficulty to answer this question for the novel food compared with the familiar food? Explain your answer.
  2. Imagine a scientist analyzes heavy metal content in fish samples to determine whether they are at an acceptable level. Their tests reveal the presence of heavy metals. But most fish contain some heavy metals. How do you think the expert would determine whether the levels they measure are within a “normal” range? Speculate on how experts might make such a determination.

During Reading:

  1. What does SRM stand for?
  2. What is the primary source of the DNA analyzed by Stephanie Servetas and her water quality team?
  3. If the water quality team did not have a reliable SRM, what problem would they encounter when analyzing a sample?
  4. Give one example of a “familiar” label you might see on the shelves of the Office of Reference Materials at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
  5. How did Servetas and her team contribute to NIST’s collection?
  6. When scientists talk about the microbiome of our digestive tract, what are they referring to?
  7. Give one example of a specific question that SRMs for food can help answer.
  8. Briefly describe the appearance of an unused Charpy.
  9. How have fatality rates from house fires in the U.S. changed since 1980? What is one factor that has likely contributed to this change?
  10. What does mAb stand for? What kind of a molecule is a mAb?

After Reading:

  1. Consider the value of SRMs as described in this story. Come up with one example of a specific SRM that is not mentioned in this story but that, if developed, would be useful. (Feel free to be creative. Your answer need not relate to the examples in this story.) If scientists were to acquire an accurate SRM for the material you described, what questions could they answer? Give at least one example. Briefly describe one of the challenges researchers might face if trying to acquire an accurate SRM for the item you chose.
  2. How did slag contribute to the Titanic disaster? What role did SRMs play in understanding this problem? With this example in mind, come up with another application not mentioned in this story of how SRMs might help understand an engineering failure. To what extent might such findings help people? For example, how might they help prevent future engineering failures?